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Monthly Archives: March 2014

The Big Bang Theory, one of americas favorite comedies about a group of scientist. In the season 5 episode The Holograpic Excitation shows a good use of motion graphics in a comedy show where it shows the ability to use a motion tracked system to manipulate the movement of a pencil in mid-air. The next part of the scene goes into theory that the whole world is infact a hologram and that we should live for the moment. This is a good use of motion graphic as it shows the Earth and then the amazement of the actor was well played and then the next image was of the solar system and then the galaxy. I found this to be a realy good use as it gives a new take on something that people are familiar with.

So for a recent college project we had to come up with an end cap that we would put at the end of our five minute film project at the end of the year and we would create the end cap by using all the techniques that were taught to us in the previous sessions to create something that was a lot better than the previous end cap that the college uses.

The first stage that I went through was the pre-production stage, I decided to first plan out a mind I associate with Gateshead College and I chose words like ‘friendly’ and ‘good place’ because when the first time that I came here the people were friendly and it was a good place to be in a better education than I was at before map on what words. After this I then went on to do I mood board on Photoshop on what I liked about something but I think I may have been confused by it as I just started to put random things that I liked about TV and Film so I put stuff like the Get Carter logo on and Conan logo because one is a famous film that was filmed in Newcastle and the second being a late night talk show that is rather hilarious. Then after this I decided to work on a few story board panels on what my final outcome may have looked like. I went through a few different designs from basing on land marks around the North East like the Angel of the North but then I decided to go to something closer like the Quayside where I was able to the find a decent picture of the area to then use for my end cap.

When it came to designing the end cap I was at first stunted because I did try out one idea where I was going to use something similar from Moulin Rouge where they have a theatre and then a video playing on the screen but instead of a video playing it would have been the logo. But I found it difficult to do at first so I then went back to my original idea of using the Quayside. I then imported the Gateshead logo into the time line, I then went through the task of trying to find a suitable place for where the logo and then the following writing. I then was able to find a more suitable place for the logo to go by moving the picture along and then I was able to then edit the piece better. I then added a light to the piece and then had the light to move from side to side and then have the logo to the reveal when the light shone to it. It also create a cool effect to the bridges where it looks like if they were shadowed.

Over all I think that I was able to create a good end cap for the project, I was able to get around the problems that I had by resourcing to previous lessons. From this I think I have been happy with my progress from the past few weeks and possibly with a little bit more experience I may be able to use the techniques that I’ve learned and able to then incorporate them into my five minute film.

Last year when I went to see the second Hobbit film with friends I was given two presents. Both were books one being Assassins Creed Black Flag and the second being Star Trek: The Next Generation Cold Equation, both were excellent books and both that I have enjoyed reading, so much that the same friend that got me the first one was able to acquire me the next to parts of the series for Star Trek. Then I got to thinking, could there be a good possibility of a future of Star Trek after Nemesis.

I’m only a small way through the second book and I’ve really enjoyed it, so for this I’m only going to focus on the first book. This takes book takes place between two different times, one being four years after the aftermath of Nemesis and the second was focused around 2367 and 2384 and this gives us a really good time frame for things to happen. In the beginning of the story it focuses around the theft of B4, Data’s brother who was found in Nemesis and has the memories of Data but those are slowly going away because of the lack of technology that B4 has, this then leads the Enterprise team on a hunt to find out who stole B4 and the other androids. The next thing in the first part I like is the fact that Worf has more of an important role as he is now the First Officer since Riker is in his own captaincy. And also this introduced me to a new character that was a romantic link to Worf called Choudhury, this was a little confusing for me because the last person I know that was romantically to Worf was Jadzia Dax, but then I remembered that she got killed off and turned into another Dax. Other than this I was also surprised that Captain Picard had also found himself a family in the form of Beverly Crusher and also a son called Rene, and this really surprised me, ever since watching Encounter at Far Point I would never have thought that Picard would ever have child. This point here could easily lead to a new future for Star Trek where it could lead Rene to become a future captain of the Enterprise.

From this point and reading a few chapters of the second book I’ve been thinking of what Star Trek would have been liked if it was set around Starfleet Academy, also with the fact that Picard wants to give up his post as captain in the distant future to properly raise his family he want to teach archaeology at Starfleet and I think that it would be a really cool thing to see. Also since the fact that Deep Space Nine was based on a Space-Port and then on a couple of planets then there should be a series that would be based on Starfleet because then it opens up another new world which was briefly brought into context in the Next Generation series when Wesley Crusher was going through his Starfleet entrance exams. For this series it could also open up the opportunity for people who have made names for themselves on the previous three shows of Next Generation, Voyager and DS9 to make appearances as either cameos or teachers like Picard being the archaeology (that’s if he doesn’t get killed off in this book or the next). But overall it would be nice to see something new from a popular sci-fi brand that has been capturing people’s imaginations for nearly 60 years, I mean we had a rebooted film series that had Leonard Nemoy in and Into Darkness was just a revised Wrath of Khan flick and wasn’t good or bad, but with a one based around Starfleet it could build up ground for a new wave of Star Trek fans.

Over the past number of years, news programmes on BBC and ITV have gradually integrated motion graphics into their news broadcasts. There have been many different types mainly on the BBC that have been informative such as a broadcast from the BBC about the seven billionth person to be born. They used a giant line graph to inform people that it was the rate of how the populace of the world was on an increase and how it would be on a continual up rise over the next 90 years. They also showed a map of the world and how a place can be fitted to make more room for the said populace and also a pictogram showing the figures on how the populace is through the year groups and showing that more people are reproducing, babies are staying healthier because of current medicine and that old people are having more life expectancy than before. I think that this type of motion graphic is a good choice to have because it looks better than most of the other graphics that news teams use and also it seems that it sort of taken out of a film. For example in Iron Man 2 when Tony creates a new element and is holding the image in his hand is rather similar to how the reporter is holding the Eiffel Tower. Over all I think that the news should feature more of this type of graphic because its more entertaining in a way to the audience.

In the 80’s a Norwegian band called Aha brought out a music video that had a unusual twist to it, it was designed to look like a early sketched music videos called Take On Me where a woman gets pulled into a weird cartoon like world and it has to be one of the most unique video that there was to come out of the 80’s. Its way that it not only has body parts coming out of a 2D space but a cool chase scene as well.

In 2011 possibly the greatest comedic musician Weird Al Yankovic released a parody version of Poker Face with other song lyrics. This song was heavily based around the use of motion graphics were based on parodies of other musicians like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and so forth. I really like this style because it sorta looks cheesy but the time of cheesiness that you can enjoy. I find a lot of Weird Al music to be really funny and he must have a blast when he’s recording them but his animated styled music videos are rather unique and are roughly different to the other animated videos.